Libertarian Alliance Director's Bulletin

Date: Monday 10th May 2010 between 6.30pm and 9.00pm at the National Liberal Club, One Whitehall Place, London SW1 (nearest tube Embankment).
Subject: Public Goods and Private Action: How Voluntary Action Can Provide Law, Welfare and Infrastructure – and Build a Good Society
Speaker: Dr. Stephen Davies

The dress code for this event is lounge suit or smart casual.
To confirm your attendance please RSVP Dr. Helen Evans at hsevans@btinternet.com

Dr. Stephen Davies is Program Officer for the Institute of Humane Studies. He joined HIS from the UK where he was Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Economic History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has worked at IHS before, in 1991 and in 1992-93, as well as teaching at many Summer Seminars and events over the years. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green. A historian, he graduated from St. Andrews University in Scotland in 1976 and grained his PhD from the same institution in 1984. He was co-editor with Dr. Nigel Ashford of The Dictionary of Conservative and Libertarian Thought (Routledge, 1991) and wrote several entries for The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism edited by Ronald Hamowy (Sage, 2008), including the general introduction. He is also the author of Empiricism and History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and of several articles and essays on topics including the private provision of public goods and the history of crime and criminal justice. He has recently completed a book on the history of the world since 1250 and the origins of modernity. Among his other interests are science fiction and the fortunes of Manchester City. Dr. Davies works on many of the Institute’s educational programs, teaches at summer seminars, liaises with the HIS faculty network, and provides academic career advice and support to graduate students.

Published by The Campaign for an Independent Britain www.eurosceptic.org.uk For 35 years, CIB has led efforts to safeguard our nation’s sovereignty. We are a democratic, independent and strictly remaining a non-party political pressure group, supported by membership subscriptions and donations from members of the public. Our objective is Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union whilst maintaining trading and friendly relations with other countries. Enquiries 07092 857684

3. Sean Gabb in The Daily Express

The front page headline in today's issue of The Daily Express is "New EU Gestapo spies on Britons" (http://tinyurl.com/y85av9r). This is all about the latest outrage from the European Union, and carries a long quotation from the Thoughts of Director Gabb. He says: "It doesn’t surprise me that Europol has been handed these rather frightening powers,... We now live in a pan-European state so it was to be expected that it would have a federal police force with powers over us....There is a real danger that opposition to EU policies could make an individual liable to arrest.... For example, if Brussels adopts a hard-line stance on climate change, it’s conceivable that someone who broadcasts their scepticism of climate change may be accused of committing an environmental crime because they have undermined the EU’s efforts to save mankind."

4. Sean Gabb in Vdare

I have written two articles this year for Peter Brimelow's on-line journal VDare (http://vdare.com/gabb/index.htm). These are both about the persecution by the British State of the British National Party. I have had a few displeased comments on these. However, what is now being done to the BNP provides a good summary of how totalitarian England has become in the past few decades. It would all have been unthinkable back in the days when I used to amuse my friends with predictions of a police state. Another point worth making is that libertarians are allowed to defend the BNP, but only in this way: "I hate and deplore these evil men. I am myself Jewish/gay/transgendered/one-third-Tibetan. But, purely from a (possibly misguided) commitment to old-fashioned liberalism, I do beg you not to put them in prison." To take this line is to concede moral hegemony to the left. You probably get away with defending the rights of the BNP in much the same way as camp entertainers like Liberace and Larry Grayson were seldom denounced as homosexuals. You do nothing to defend freedom of speech. A better defence is as follows: "Nick Griffin and his friends should have an absolute right to speak as they please on public issues. This was an unquestioned right in England before 1965. So far as it is no longer a right, we no longer live in a free country."

5.Sean Gabb on Television

On the 7th March 2010, I went on the BBC1 television programme "The Big Questions". My subject was whether voting should be made compulsory. The assumption behind the debate was that: voting is good, people are not voting in the right numbers, and so what should be done to raise the turnout? I disrupted proceedings by pointing out that people are not voting because the politicians are all scum. You can view my contribution here: http://www.vimeo.com/10010978

6. Speech on Libertarianism

On the 17th March 2010, I gave a speech to the Politics Society of The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School on libertarianism. I only had twenty minutes for may own speech, followed by twenty of questions, and this had to be a basic introduction. But I think I covered the main points. You can find the speech here: http://www.libertarian.co.uk/multimedia/2010-03-17-hbaske-sig.mp3

7. Libertarian Alliance Meetings

Our friends over at the other Libertarian Alliance continue with their monthly meetings. I can hardly ever get up to London to attend these. But they always look very interesting, and I receive endless reports of how interesting they have been. For details of the next meeting, contact David McDonagh for details: mcdonagh_d@yahoo.co.uk

8. Richard Blake Activities

Just before Christmas, my dear friend Mr Blake put the finishing touches to his masterpiece "Blood of Alexandria". This is a sensitive account of land reform and mass-murder in late Byzantine Egypt. It will be published by Hodder & Stoughton in June 2010. You can pre-order copies from Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/yb4qvms He is now putting the last touches to his "Sword of Damascus", which is a novel about Greek Fire and how the Arabs never laid hands on the secret. This will not be available until June 2011. But Mr Blake believes in having a long pipeline. Once "Sword of Damascus" is completed - probably in the next fortnight - he will settle properly to work on an as yet untitled thriller. It is set in the July of 2014. This is a world in which neither world wars happened. The map is still impressively red. The pound is worth a pound. The Triple Monarchy rules Central Europe with benign inefficiency. America, following the Second Civil War (1923-8), has become a nightmarish tyranny where a man can be shot on the spot for smoking. There is a serial sex killer on the prowl in London and Prague....

9. Sean Gabb on Facebook

I was nagged into joining this a few weeks ago. Unlike Linkedin, that was a complete waste of time, this has been most interesting. http://www.facebook.com/sean.gabb